Forum raps 2 women for evidence tampering

A consumer forum here has rapped two women for filing a complaint on “frivolous grounds” against a beauty parlour by “tampering” with its receipts for availing benefits of life time services.

The West Delhi District Consumer Disputes Redressal Forum, while dismissing the complaint against the parlour in Paschim Vihar here, also imposed a cost of Rs 1,000 on Delhi residents Poonam Goyal and Priya Kansal.

The forum said the words “life time” written on the receipts of the salon, which was submitted as an evidence by the women, were in different handwriting which showed they were tampered.

“A careful perusal of the handwriting of these two words ‘life time’ reveals that these two words are written in different handwriting by different persons. With naked eye this difference is visible and we do not find any reason to disbelieve the testimony of the Opposite Party (beauty parlour) that receipts were tampered with and the words ‘life time’ were added subsequently,” the forum presided by Bimla Makin said.

While holding that the complainants tried to take undue advantage of the system, tampered with the receipts and filed the complaint on frivolous grounds, the forum said whosoever tries to do so, must be shown the door.

“The legal system is meant not only to protect the poor litigant and a consumer who is not having enough bargaining power in comparison to the service provider but it is also meant to do justice to both the parties before it; consumer or service provider and whosoever tries to take undue advantage of the system must be shown the door,” the forum, also comprising its member Urmila Gupta, said.

Complainants Poonam and Priya had told the forum that they had registered for beautician life time course for limited services from Global Looks beauty parlour in June 2010, but the salon neither gave any services of this course nor it refunded their course fee of Rs 16,000.

The salon, however, contended before the forum that the complainants had tampered with the cash memo and added the words “life time” with malafide intentions for extracting monetary benefits from it.

The salon also claimed that the women had not approached it before filing this complaint.